Add ability to send images to the Assistant

[andreibondarev]

You should be able to provide an image_url to the Assistant for the supported multi-modal LLMs:

• OpenAI support (Langchain::Assistant when using OpenAI accepts a message with image_url #799)
• Mistral AI support (Langchain::Assistant when using MistralAI accepts a message with image_url #803)
• Add ability to send images to the Assistant when using Ollama #847
• Add ability to send images to the Assistant when using Anthropic #848
• Google Gemini (currently only supports images uploaded to Google Cloud)
• Google Vertex AI (currently only supports images uploaded to Google Cloud)

Note

Some of the LLMs do not accept an image_url rather a Base64-encoded payload (Anthropic) or a file URI uploaded to the cloud (Google Gemini). We need to figure out how to handle it.

[dghirardo]

Hi @andreibondarev, I noticed that the current version already supports sending images to LLMs.

You just need to include the image within the messages parameter. For example, when using OpenAI models, you can include images using the image_url content type. Here's how:

llm = Langchain::LLM::OpenAI.new(api_key: ENV["OPENAI_API_KEY"])

llm.chat(
  messages: [
    {
      role: "user",
      content: [
        { type: "text", text: "What's in this image?" },
        {
          type: "image_url",
          image_url: {
            url: "https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dd/Gfp-wisconsin-madison-the-nature-boardwalk.jpg/2560px-Gfp-wisconsin-madison-the-nature-boardwalk.jpg"
          }
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  model: "gpt-4o"
).completion

Other LLMs only support sending the image in base64 format, but this must still be done within the messages parameter.

[andreibondarev]

Support for OpenAI with #799.

[mattlindsey]

You have probably thought about this already, but seems there are many cases to support. One solution is have all these different parameters to the Assistant:
image_url_data where image is fetched from URL into base64 first and sent to llm that way (or image_urls_data array)
image_url where just URL is sent to llm (or image_urls array)
image where single base64 data is sent (or images array)
image_filename where file is read into memory and sent (or image_filenames array)

Sorry if I'm making this too confusing/complicated. There's also image_uri I suppose.